Manual D-Movie mode control update for Nikon D90 (and D5000)?

This rumor has been going around for a while and it seems that now Nikon confirmed it (according to a ProLost reader who received this email from Nikon):

"We are working on an update to these equipments to allow manual selection of shutter speeds and ISO during D-Movie mode and more, we don’t have a specific date but we are working on it. We have had customers with the same concern and we are trying to improve on this firmware update."

Good on You, Nikon. I remember some funny email exchange a 5DII user posted on some forum. This one here looks heaps better

Placido

Basically, would that mean that amateur D90 owners will obtain what expert-wanabee 5DmkII users are desperately asking for ? Fun

Makoto

>Basically, would that mean that amateur D90 owners will obtain what expert-wanabee 5DmkII users are desperately asking for ?

Can’t be so sure because the D90 has a huge problem besides the manual control — the super compressed image of the Motion Jpeg.

I’d rather like Nikon to improve that BEFORE manual control.

5D MkII users are so desperate because their image quality is already somewhat acceptable.

funny

shutter? the shutter remains open for as long as you record. what does manual shutter selection in video even mean….do they mean frame rate?

human

With most video cameras and motion picture cameras you can adjust the exposure time of each frame of video or film. This is independent to frame rate, but obviously frame rate impacts the exposure times you can select. e.g. If you’re shooting at 25 frames per second, you can’t have exposure times of 1/5 second per frame.

In motion picture cameras you have a rotating mirrored shutter that determines the exposure time relative to the frame rate. In the current video enabled DSLRs the exposure is controlled by an electronic shutter (essentially the speed of this is how long the sensor collects information for each frame).

Andi

‘Exposure Time’ might have been a more appropriate term in that context.

Brian

The term shutter speed is commonly used in video, what the Nikon rep said made perfect sense. Shutter speed and frame rate are two different things. A bit of a google search sheds some light on the issue:

“Shutter speed is the duration of the exposure used to form the image. For most current camcorders it is the amount of time the CCD(or in our case CMOS) is allowed to gather light before it is read. (its the electronic on-and-off of the sensor, not the movement of the mechanical shutter in front of it).

Frame rate is how often the full image is updated in the video data stream”

http://www.kinogo.com Mike

That is the best rumors this years Thanks for sharing I can have a good day now.

Dylan

same here!

editman

Finally!

Lance

Sounds like we will at least have “some” idea of what’s going on in movie mode now!
Would it really have been that hard just to get this right the first time? I realize Canon got it wrong too, but come on… did these companies even TRY to film anything before letting these loose on the public?

Zoetmb

The grammar in that statement is very poor, so this definitely cannot be any kind of official statement from Nikon. If it was a reply from an individual tech, maybe.

http://nikonrumors.com/ [NR] admin

just fyi – most (if not all) of the Nikon US support is outsourced to other countries

Anonymous

Judging from many posts on various forums, the grammar wouldn’t be perfect from a native speaker anyway.

I think it is obvious this is not official so the errors just remind me this is a rumor.

I’m sure they are developing the video facility in general and it seems likely that they’ll do this using the D90 rather than a new untested product.

So a firmware improvement seems likely. What and when are still anyone’s guess.

Brian

If you still can’t control the aperture then such an update would be a huge disappointment.

sylens

i thought you could control the aperture as long as you set it before you enter live view ?

Brian

That may be true but I haven’t heard anything of it. I personally haven’t gotten the chance to use a D90.

funny

what prevents you from puttion on a lens with an apperture ring and moving it while shooting video. that sounds like “apperture control”

Stephen

Well, for the most part, when doing video, you don’t want to mess with the aperture anyway. It’s something you set and forget. The shutter speed is way more important because you can catch motion without blur and the like.

Jimmy

What I want to know is should I wait for the D400 or go ahead and snag a D300? The D300 doesn’t seem that much different than the D90 except it costs a lot more. Patience, grasshopper.

Craig

The are several features that the D300 has the D90 doesn’t, mostly aimed at the advanced user; weather sealing, better AF, higher FPS, and 14-bit immediately come to mind.

patience

patience is a virtue my friends and its good rumor for people who are waiting for it.

http://blog.sapnis.com N.R.

as if those would be the biggest issues with D-movie … the biggest problem is the horrible compression of the resulting file. of course, these changes are also welcome, but with those compression artifacts, I don’t see using it for anything remotely serious

funny

I don’t care much about the compression. yes it is soft, but it is prefectly good for a lot of purposes, specially online distributed video, and even home viewing on SD and HD TVs.

What is totally unacceptable is the severety of the jello effect on pans. I realize canon has it too on their significantly more expensive 5DII, but it is somewhat less severe (still unacceptable though as it totally ruins shots which were otherwise flawless).

I remain dissapointed.

Makoto

>funny

No, sorry, you are wrong.

In no way is the compressiion rate perfectly good.
If you want lower quality, you can do that by compressing the video you’ve shot. Please do that on your own will you.

What a lot of us want is the option to compress the file LATER and first save the file at the largest size the chipset and the memory-card allows us to. I said option, so if you want to save space in your storage, then you can set it to Standard mode or whatever.

Human

The compression quality is irrelevant if what you are compressing is terrible because of some other artifact (i.e. Jelly effect). An uncompressed format, like you suggest, would be nice. But who wants uncompressed jelly?

Also, the compression type used by the 5DII (MPEG 4) is not a better option than the d90s Motion JPEG. As Nikon improves their implementation of Motion JPEG is may turn out to be a better option.

“Also, the compression type used by the 5DII (MPEG 4) is not a better option than the d90s Motion JPEG. As Nikon improves their implementation of Motion JPEG is may turn out to be a better option.”

you may want to revise your facts by comparing the output from these cameras. The 5DII is much much crisp even at similar resolutions (also check the new rebel’s 720p output. FAR sharper).

the 5DII it is a better option if you want better quality. The motion jpeg compression used in the d90 will wipe out fine textures and smudge details into a soft looking output. It’s not wonder though. the 5DMII on the other thand preserves a huge amount of detail that’s to it’s superior codec.

Also remember H264 is the prefered choice for HD content for a reason. It simply yields fantastic quality per file size. how many blu ray player and discs have you seen with motion jpeg lately? how many with h264?

it has nothing to do with revising motion jpeg. motion jpeg was never really meant for hd video period. H264 on the other hand will always deliver the most quality at the best size compared to motion jpeg.

One advantage motion jpeg has is that it takes less cpu to encode and decode. My suspicion is that whatever processor the D90 has simply can’t handle h264 and since it is an entry level model nikon figured it could get away with motion jpeg.

nikon (assuming the camera cpu can even handle it) should give H264 options. If you have a reasonably fast system and demands, you should use it over motion jpeg. For granny systems, motion jpeg will do fine though.

human

“Also remember H264 is the prefered choice for HD content for a reason. It simply yields fantastic quality per file size.”

This is true, however it comes with a very big “but”.

The compression in H264 is complex and uses referencing between frames with keyframes. This is fine for a playback format (like on a bluray) but it is terrible for editing. Making a cut in mast places requires a lot of re-encoding. This has a detrimental effect on quality and efficiency. As a solution to this most professional/enthusiast editors will use an intermediate codec like the one Apple provides with Final Cut Pro.

“Also, the compression type used by the 5DII (MPEG 4) is not a better option than the d90s Motion JPEG. As Nikon improves their implementation of Motion JPEG is may turn out to be a better option.”

I stand by this statement. Yes, the 5DII looks better at the same resolution as the D90, but this is not because of the codec used. It is the implementation of the codec that matters. H264 can look like garbage and it can look beautiful, it all depends on the implementation. Open Photoshop and make a JPEG with different extremely compression settings. One will look fantastic and the other will look like garbage. Try the same thing with some video using H264 in Quicktime. The problem is not necessarily JPEG or H264, its the way it is used. Nikon could create a H264 camera and it could look worse than the Motion JPEG D90.

New careers have emerged in recent years for people that solely deal with tweaking H264 encoding to get the best playback of a specific piece of video. They get beautiful results for playback, but it takes a lot of work. H264 is in no way the codec you ideally want to capture the best quality video for editing later.

funny

>In no way is the compressiion rate perfectly good.
>If you want lower quality, you can do that by compressing the video you’ve shot. >Please do that on your own will you

perfectly good for a lot of purposes as I said. every purpose? no. If you want 2 minutes of video per 8GB card, please do that on your own will you. enjoy.

human

“If you want 2 minutes of video per 8GB card,”

Plenty of people want that. It’s a great solution of single camera drama and some professional HD cameras offer something similar.

All ‘Makoto’ is asking for is the option to have compressed or uncompressed video. I don’t understand when people argue against having more options. “Don’t put video in my SLR, I don’t want the option to use it or not.”

Micke

“I don’t understand when people argue against having more options. ”

Yes, I completely agree. Especially when it comes to video. Since the movie-mode is essentially just an implementation of LiveView, which basically is nothing more than bulb-exposure, which has existed on cameras since… forever! However, when they start adding crummy Vari-Angle LCDs to my semi-pro cameras, to aid movie-shooting, I’ll get cranky.